


Looking for a Fix

by jaythewriter



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Angels/Demons AU, It was all ollie's idea, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-22
Updated: 2014-05-22
Packaged: 2018-01-26 04:32:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1674815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaythewriter/pseuds/jaythewriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jay knows he's alone, no matter how hard he might pretend otherwise. Humans can't see angels after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Looking for a Fix

**Author's Note:**

> All thanks to a prompt the-elusive-ollie on Tumblr gave me.  
> Trigger warnings for: hallucinations and depression.

Angels and demons are real. 

Not in the sense that humans believe-- to be honest, the higher beings think their concept of what those two creatures are is a bit, well, hilarious. Those humans think of it in terms of two kingdoms facing off one another in a battle of good and evil, which in itself is ridiculous when good and evil blend and mix and there is no exact sense of what either of those things /are/. 

Where are the limits? What about those who are ‘evil’ for the sake of ‘good’, like a father stealing food from a market-- evil-- to feed his children… good?

No, no. Humans have it all wrong.

Demons and angels are born of negativity and positivity. Energy, to be exact. 

That energy originates from the souls of dying humans, rising from the dirt from whence they came and blending together. Energy doesn’t vanish or go away into nothingness; that much is true. Those scientists aren’t /completely/ stupid.

What they don’t know is that the energy creates creatures, two different types that stand as polar opposites: angels and demons.

Positivity is what forms the angels, as one might guess. They are sunrays come to life, with eyes that can look into the heart and leave a beautiful mark that never fades away. 

Sometimes a human can spot them, if they look hard enough. All one would have to do is look into the skies while the sun is asleep and catch a glimpse of flashing light. Oftentimes that light may come across as nothing more than a plane gliding through the night. 

Demons, of course, come to life with the negativity that is unleashed from exhausted souls. Though they may be seen as troublesome, they are necessary-- positivity cannot exist without negativity. There is no evil in showing humans the more arduous side of life. It strengthens them to go on and seek out the positives that will help them grow and be happy. 

Like angels, demons can be seen, albeit fleetingly. If you have ever sat awake, unable to reach restful dreams and slumber, you may have caught a shadow that stood out a bit too darkly against the other shadows of your room.

Congratulations; you weren’t hallucinating, something-- rather, someone was really there.

The two creatures must survive off of what they are made out of, and so they create situations where they can find sustenance. Whispers in one’s head are often borne not of their own consciousness but a second voice. Last week, a young teenaged girl cut off contact with all of her friends from middle school, and she’s now curled up alone in her bedroom, wondering what will become of her. She wasn’t the one who came up with the idea to get rid of all those connections.

Luckily for her, it was for the best; all of those she once called friends are on different paths in life, and she needed to move on anyway. Perhaps an angel will come to her and push her in the right direction, towards another group of friends she has seen in the halls of her high school, chattering away about all her favorite television shows.

Life moves on, both humans and higher beings benefit, all is well.

Even with their means of survival being at odds, demons do not wish harm upon angels, and angels don’t have any ill intentions toward them either. It’s difficult for them to fight in the first place when neither species has a tendency to interact with one another. This is not entirely intentional; it is simply how life is, how it always has been. Any bumps or accidental brushings of shoulders goes by without so much as an eyelash flutter.

Once again, life moves on.

But, humans and the pair of opposite species are the same in that they vary from being to being: every single one of them varies in personality, thoughts, and looks.

And every once in a while, an angel gets too curious. A demon finds that it cannot ignore the glinting high up above them in the heavens, and it gives chase.

It has been known to happen between angels and demons that share the same human’s dying soul, as though they cannot resist coming together and clinging on tight.

Still, with so many people on Earth-- and a phenomenal number of them buried in the soil-- it isn’t often that this happens, and they’re often too busy feeding off of a human’s energy from halfway across the world to bump into the other half.

So it won’t happen anytime soon.

And especially not to Jay.

Never to Jay.

\--

Jay likes Tim.

It’s not often that Jay finds he actually /likes/ the humans he feeds off of. Most of them are almost too negative to latch onto; he tries to get close and is overwhelmed by powerful waves that sap him clean and leave him too exhausted to actually seek out anybody else.

Then again, that’s his own fault. He intentionally ventures out in search of people who might need a helpful push into the right direction. It’s not the best way of staying well fed but it’s the most fulfilling one, in his opinion. 

A quick fix is one thing; all he would need to do is find a home full of exciteful energy, the kind that might come from a family with a newborn child. The mother might hear her baby so much as gurgle, or, hell, she’ll look at them and her heart will warm up, flooding over until the entire room is covered in her aura. 

And it’s wonderful! Jay would never think of such a situation as shallow or anything necessarily awful. He loves to play the part of the audience when he finds homes like that; he’ll sit in the corner the whole night, drinking in every last drop of positivity and sighing in time with the mother as she hugs her child to her chest. 

But he doesn’t get much more than that out of it. It’s a food source for him and not much else. He doesn’t /work/ for it. 

Tim is perfect for Jay, though. He fulfills his needs, and Jay fulfills Tim’s as best as he can with the gentle whispers he utters into his ear when he’s lost in thought, closer to sleep than he is to consciousness.

(It’s as close to friendship as Jay is ever going to get. He’s happy with it. As happy as he can possibly be when Tim is completely unaware of the presence fluttering at his side.)

As often as Jay is here, Tim’s bedroom might as well be his own. He’s comfortable here, amongst the unwashed formal clothing that litters the floor, left where it was dropped the moment Tim got back from work. 

As tiny as his Vegas apartment is, it’s more than cozy enough for the two of them. The bed is huge, covered by two patchwork quilts instead of one with the lack of a fitted sheet. Though the man’s clothing lays around on the floor in unorganized piles, his papers from school are hardly in the same state. They sit neatly stacked together in a plastic bin perching on the small oakwood desk. 

The placement of the desk is intentional in itself, with a window facing it on the opposite wall that allows both Tim and Jay the beautiful Vegas sunset in all its smoky blood-red glory. That sunset reaches out and illuminates Tim’s desk, giving him just the right amount of light to finish off his countless essays in.

Besides the desk and bed, there are no other pieces of furniture in the room, save for a dresser across from the undressed mattress. It bears the honor of being the cleanest surface in the entire apartment; it’s bare except for a single crackly radio and a thin layer of dust that hasn’t been touched since Tim moved here.

That radio is Jay’s other best friend. He fiddles with it whenever Tim is out and he doesn’t have the energy to go with him to school or the theatre he’s attempting to hit the bigtime at. It can only pick up two stations, one of them being a religious talk show that Jay can’t stand listening to unless he’s in a particularly humorous mood. The other is a rock station that plays ‘all your favorite hits from the 90s up to today!’, as the announcer loves to remind the listeners every hour or so.

As grating as the music can be at times with poppy singles that get played nearly every day, it gives Jay the boost he needs for when Tim comes home, heavy and practically radiating negativity like it’s the newest trend. Hearing some famous singer blow out the radio speakers with the reminder that he can do it, he is the /greatest/, he is /love/, Jay can get through the day, and he’s able to pass that on to Tim.

This apartment and its owner reek of simplicity. Tim may not enjoy that fact very much, given that he’s training to become somebody who is never himself while working, but Jay couldn’t ask for anything better. Humans ask to be everything and nothing, they ask to be unique when they already are unique but refuse to see it. It’s complex and confusing and Jay gets lost along the way, unsure how to help those humans when they ask for so much and are unsatisfied with what they get. More, more, more-- he’d give it to them if he could, but he can’t pinpoint what ‘more’ is anymore and… all he can do is thank fate for Timothy Wright. 

Tim wants to be happy, something all people want, but he wants it in a way that doesn’t match everybody’s definition of happy. On the outside, he is a normal college student, pushing his way through school with lukewarm cups of coffee and a constant sense that he forgot to finish this project and that assignment.

But Jay knows everything. He has heard it all over the phone, in the form of angered parents who have failed their son in their lack of support. They didn’t understand when he started seeing things that weren’t necessarily there, from creatures with stretched proportions and screaming voices to shapeless colors that were out to get him. Medication was what he wanted, and so they got it for him, but when it wasn’t a fix-all, he lost them completely, because /surely/ the human brain can be corrected in a one-two-three process rather than one that goes something like one-two-oh-shit-the-world-is-out-of-control-again-okay-I’m-okay-again-three-maybe.

Being in and out of hospitals that have clearly left their painful marks upon him, Tim never had the chance to find others who might give him the support his parents didn’t provide. He’s alone, at least as alone as he can be with an invisible force residing in his home. 

Jay sees the boy’s strength. It’s in the dark circles that were bruised into his lower eyelids, the marks that criss-cross over his bulky thighs and his firm upper arms. It hides away in a muscle that cannot be seen when one flexes; Tim is strong, so strong, so much stronger than he gives himself credit for.

But he needs somebody to remind him to get out of bed every so often, that it’s definitely worth the effort, and how overjoyed will the director be if he doesn’t show up late, and maybe that test isn’t as terrifying as he thinks it is?

And that somebody is Jay. Even if Tim isn’t aware of him, Jay is certain that he wouldn’t have made it this far without the unseen feather light touches to his wrist that make him think of when his mother truly thought he could make it far in life. 

The days that Tim manages to overcome the voices in his head and the heaviness weighing down his body, he comes home nearly glowing with accomplishment, in his exhausted grins and the way he’ll move his hips just a little to the stupid music playing off the radio he must’ve forgotten to turn off before leaving. 

That accomplishment is delicious, and Jay basks in it. For a few moments, he’s as real as Tim is, and he thinks he can see the boy looking at him, though he is actually staring right through him.

Jay can pretend, though, clinging to false hope and thinking that Tim is grateful to him for all that he’s done.

And he always does pretend. He always puts his energy into the fantasy that maybe, if he puts enough effort into it, Tim will realize he is there, and they will talk for the first time in all these years together.

Pretending is all Jay has. But he does it enough that surely, someday, something will come of it.

Right?

\--

Angels aren’t perfect. They can’t keep up with their food source all the time. Humans walk /fast/, rushing from one place to the next, eager to shake another hand, exchange another nod and a smile. Good on them, it’s all fine and dandy that they should be so sociable. But even Tim does this, especially on his best days when he’s coming down from the high of a job well done with school or acting.

Today, Jay finds he can’t even make it past Tim’s bedroom door. As excitable as Tim was last night, having won the dentist’s role in Little Shop of Horrors (whatever /that/ was), it wasn’t enough energy for Jay.

(Or, more likely, Jay wasted-- well, surely it wasn’t wasted, no, that’s too harsh a word when it was put towards a good cause-- he tried to get Tim to notice him again, shining bright as he could and responding whenever Tim started talking to himself about the essays he needed to get finished or how he needed to call back the chinese place down the street about a job.)

(Jay wasn’t successful, not in the least, but it was worth a try.)

The exhausted angel perches at the single window of the room, watching through the grimy glass. Tim’s busted up car peels out from the apartment building’s parking lot, creaking and bouncing in protest of being shaken awake so abruptly. 

All alone again, Jay sinks to the floor, back to the wall. He wonders if sleep is worth all the trouble it brings. It’s not his favorite way to wile away the hours while Tim is gone. 

Even if angels aren’t reinvigorated by sleep, it’s something they can still /do/, probably left over from the more human aspects that they take on from the dying party that ‘made’ them. 

The more appealing aspect of sleep are the dreams that come with it. For the first few decades of Jay’s life, he found that his dreams were actually rather boring, composed of memories that weren’t his. 

They often featured a farm and a home that were both falling apart, with rotted wood and rusty nails sticking out of every wall. The family that lived on the farm didn’t seem to be bothered much by their less than preferable housing, though. Two little girls, dark skinned and dark haired and dark eyed, often ran into the barn itself, eager to visit their animal friends and play. Their father and mother were similar, bearing their always present smiles.

Jay doesn’t know for sure if he came from one of these people or if these memories belong to somebody whose positivity he fed off of. Dreams are odd and mysterious in their origin. 

Ever since he met Tim, though, he has begun taking on his memories, and every time he’s transported to the very same bedroom he fell asleep in sans his presence in the corner, Jay jolts himself awake. He doesn’t need the reminder that Tim sees himself as more alone than ever when the person who loves him most is standing right beside him.

Sleep is troublesome, and so Jay is left with very few options in terms of how he’s going to occupy himself. Once upon a time, he would have started picking up Tim’s mess on the floor, sorting it out and putting it /somewhat/ in order. But-- not only does that call for energy Jay doesn’t have-- it never ends well.

The first time, Tim was too tired to notice the difference, choosing instead to faceplant into bed and move on to the next day as though nothing had happened. Jay will never forget the look on his face the second time, though, when he came in wearing his best white button up shirt and pressed black pants, fresh from a job interview.

His hands trembled at his sides, and he breathed hard, talking to nobody in particular, begging for an explanation, and was he seeing things again? But he’s been getting /better/, he was so much better lately, he wasn’t even seeing the tiny black fuzzy creatures that often skittered across his floor when he was near sleep. 

For way too many stressful hours, he rocked back and forth on his bed, small and childlike, thumb between his biting teeth and eyes shiny. He held tight to his knees and waited for the panic to pass, because there was nothing he could do beyond pop a pill and hope he had maybe put away his laundry during a sleep-walking episode.

Jay buried himself away in the closet for days afterward, hiding among Tim’s three pairs of shoes and the important formal clothing he actually bothers hanging up. Of course, Tim didn’t notice the change, too busy trying to keep himself together for life to even care that his room was a little less bright and that his brain was a bit more quiet.

(It was the strangest feeling, being mad with Tim for not noticing he was gone when he never noticed him in the first place, but Jay got over it soon enough.)

Listening to the radio is a harmless enough option. But Jay gets sick of listening to the same music every day, as inspiring as it can be. 

And so, there is nothing left for him to do. This is hardly the first time Jay has ended up in this situation, but that doesn’t make the experience any less of a pain in the ass. 

It must be nice, being human. You’re capable of constant movement, able to depend mostly on yourself for sustenance and more- and there’s a never ending supply of company beyond your front door. Not all of them will fit well with you, too jagged around the edges, but that’s not a problem when you can move onto the next person.

Well, it’s more complicated than that, it’s not as though Jay thinks it’s a smooth process but he can’t help thinking this way when he’s this bitter. Tim has all the chances in the world and Jay has none, stuck drifting between one meal to the next and hoping that there’s enough energy present there for him to keep going.

He runs his long fingered hands down his glowing face, sighing heavily. If he closes his eyes, he can play the waiting game and hope that when he next opens his eyes, an hour has passed, or even more if he’s lucky. 

Jay parts his fingers, peering between them with hopeful blue eyes. 

The rock ‘n roll themed clock mounted upon the wall by the door shows that a single minute has passed, or at least, Jay thinks that’s what it says. It’s a little difficult to tell when all the numbers are replaced by guitars and fucking music notes.

It’s more than he can take; his chest goes tight, and he glares daggers into the clock, unaware of what he’s doing until it’s too late. The glass pane shatters before the hook holding the clock up shudders and lets it go, sending it plummeting to the ground.

/Crash./

Shards of glass lay scattered upon the wooden planked floor, resting in the path Tim will be taking once he gets home. Jay stares at the mess, taken aback, unable to tear his eyes away from what he’s done.

Without a second thought, the angel rises to his feet and-- well, drifts through the air rather than walks-- towards the glass, sweeping it all aside with what little power he has left to make proper contact. Seeing it all together in a little pile is too suspicious, though. Jay makes to push the shards around, trying his best to make them look like an accidental mess again, but not one that puts Tim’s feet in any danger.

The effort takes it all out of Jay, leaving him heavier than ever. Tempting as it is to collapse on the floor and lay there, he refuses to be stepped through or have the door swung through him. Another reminder of his physical absence, one too many. He inches his way across the floor, wincing, limbs resisting his efforts and dragging out behind him. How he manages to heave himself up onto the mattress is a mystery but the important thing is, he did it, and he has no choice but to lay there for the rest of the day, praying he won’t go mad from tedium.

Is this what life is like for pets? Sitting around the house forever, waiting for an owner that won’t even notice them unless they beg and beg and beg? 

Jay bitterly curls into himself, clutching his knees to his chest and closing his eyes tight. Maybe he’ll fall asleep and he’ll get lucky this time, dreaming of somebody new, someone he doesn’t even remember sapping energy from.

If his luck thus far today is anything to go by though, fate isn’t going to be on his side.

\--

“Yeah, I’m sorry, I can’t come over with the homework… no, I can’t-- I can’t! Okay?! My car is low on gas and you practically live across the city. I could’ve given it to you if you’d just come to rehearsal, but-- no, I’m not blaming you, I’m just pointing out the facts here!”

Tim’s shouting is what rattles Jay from his thankfully dreamless slumber. He barely stirs, though, unable to pull himself free of this position without pain weighing him down. Instead, he listens closely through the walls, thin enough to pick up on what the neighbors are up to twenty four hours a day.

“No, Brian… No. I’m sorry. I promise I’ll give it to you tomorrow at rehearsal if you come, but until I can get my car filled up, you’re fucked over… unless you want to listen to me telling you all fifty two problems you gotta solve-- okay, okay, I know you don’t got time.”

Brian. That’s a name Jay has heard before, numerous times, and he even has a face to assign to it. He’s handsome, for somebody mortal; he could pass for an angel, with his kind brown eyes and his strong bulky frame, but his goofy smile quickly erases any doubt that he is actually human. The man visited once, sticking by Tim’s side all night and chatting away, about plays and life and friendship, and he never stopped radiating this wonderful aura of happiness. Jay still isn’t certain whether he’s /always/ like that or if Tim’s presence happens to put him in an exceptionally good mood. 

Either way, he had energy to live off of for days afterward. He didn’t have to feed off of Tim even once-- and as tempting as it was to chase after Brian and squeeze him for all he was worth, Jay felt obligated to stay at Tim’s side, especially in his loneliest hours.

It’s strange, though. As much as Tim smiled at him and listened close to every word Brian had to say, the idea of him and Brian quarreling doesn’t sit well with Jay.

Not as though there’s much Jay can do about it. He continues to lounge upon the bed with the sheets splayed around him, listening close to Tim as he huffs and puffs his way through the rest of the conversation with Brian. Before long, Jay hears the beep of his phone shutting off and the door swings open, permitting a haggard Tim into the bedroom, all ruffled dark hair and tired brown eyes.

Of course, the first thing he notices is that his novelty clock is forever ruined. He doesn’t say anything for a good moment, staring down at the pile of glass and the chipped plastic of the clock’s frame. 

“Well, that’s a bummer,” he mumbles under his breath. He shakes his head sullenly and vanishes back into the other room, apparently in search of a broom. All Jay can do is pretend not to be there, though the guilt hangs heavy on his heart. Tim has had that clock forever, what if he actually kind of liked it?

The shuffle of feet against the floor alerts Jay to Tim’s return, and he opens his eyes.

Standing where Tim ought to be is something that Jay can’t even explain. If the night hours had a form, they would be this creature, with the shadows that weave and pulse across their otherwise pale skin, through the veins that travel up to their neck and down through their muscular legs. Their eyes are equally dark with pupils that could pass for miniature stars, sparkling in the light coming through the window.

Jay wants to scream-- like that would be very helpful in the first place-- and the urge rattles in his throat, banging off his windpipe and making its way to his lips, but it escapes him as nothing more than a helpless whimper. 

And for the first time in memory, somebody is looking at him. /At/ him. Not through him, not over him, not around him: this thing sees him, and is roving over his weakened form with their peculiar shining eyes. Jay shrinks into himself with his arms over his head, breathing fast, every limb set off trembling. 

They blink once, and the smallest of grins spreads across their round cheeked face. 

“Are you what I think you are?”

What did they think he was? Surely they don’t think he’s a human like Tim; it’s a little difficult to make that sort of mistake when Jay is his own light source with white rays radiating off of him in every direction. 

Either way, Jay can’t answer. His throat bobs with a silent nervous swallow. The stranger tilts their head, reaching to claw at their brown shoulder length hair in thought.

“Hm. If you are, you must be kind of stupid or something,” they say through a condescending grin. Their laughter is deep and rumbles in their chest, pulling a shiver from Jay’s spine. “Tim isn’t the best source for food. And if you’re laying there because you’re starved, well, I guess you’ve already figured that out.”

Shrugging their broad shoulders, they cross the room, dropping down onto the edge of the mattress and disturbing the sheets. Jay’s heart skips a beat, praying Tim won’t notice the difference. Something tells the frozen angel that Tim isn’t aware of this stranger’s presence and wouldn’t take well to seeing his room and its contents moving about without his help.

“No hard feelings, buddy, I don’t have anything against you,” the veiny creature says casually, patting a long fingered hand against Jay’s leg. A chill is left in the wake of their touch.“I know how it is, we’re both looking for a fix, and sometimes it doesn’t go so well. So I’m not gonna mess with you so long as you don’t mess with me, got it? I mean, I don’t see myself leaving for a /long/ time.”

Their friendly grin grows somewhat smug, quirking at the ends as Tim shuffles back into the room and stoops to sweep the shattered glass into a dustpan.

“Can you blame me? Tim’s kind of the best sort of meal I’ve ever had. He’s a good kid but I gotta eat, and no way was I sticking around Brian when he’s only ever had like, one bad day in his life.”

Brian? Jay utters a soft squeak, putting the pieces together: this person must have found Tim through Brian. After all, Tim only willingly goes out of his way to spend his time with Brian and nobody else. The way this odd creature is talking though, they sound like they live the same way as Jay.

It doesn’t take more than a second for Jay to decide that this isn’t an angel sitting cross-legged across from him, joyfully kicking one foot in the air. But what does that make them then? As fucking chatty as they are, Jay would think that they’d have already told him.

“Poor thing was all pouty at rehearsal yesterday and didn’t stop being pouty for ages,” they go on, stretching their arms behind their head. They lay back against the bed, lounging like Jay, though they don’t hesitate to close their eyes when there’s a very real chance that they may drift off to sleep. What is it like to live that way, without fear of reminders prickling at the back of their mind?

“Mm, fun as it is to talk to someone for once, it’s not as fun as I’d think,” the creature bemoans  
when Tim exits the room to dump out the glass. Jay catches the growl that rumbles up past his throat; it’s loud enough to catch the other being’s attention, and they laugh at him as he turns his head to bury his face in the mattress. “Fine, I won’t make any judgments until the little negative Nancy cheers up enough to charge your batteries. Who knows. You might be the most interesting angel in the world for all I know.”

With that, they fall silent, arms tucked beneath their heads, the biggest most shit-eating grin Jay has ever seen in his life on their face. It would be enraging if Jay could actually bring himself to be angry when he has no means of expressing it beyond a faint harrumph. 

For the time being though, he has no choice but to watch this bastard feed off of the harsh and exhausting waves rolling off of Tim at an unbelievable rate. Once Tim collapses into bed, he doesn’t move for the rest of the night save to kick off his shoes, and he squirms up until he can hug his pillow and stare into the setting sun beyond the window.

Jay tingles at the edges where he and Tim brush bodies, his legs cutting through Tim’s waist. He can’t feel him but Jay is hyperaware of every socalled point of contact. The third stretched out upon the bed has their left elbow jutting through Tim’s lower leg, and much like Jay, they go unfelt and unseen.

The only difference is that Jay suspects they couldn’t care any less whether Tim acknowledged them or not.


End file.
